Extinct birds : an attempt to unite in one volume a short account of those birds which have become extinct in historical times : that is, within the last six or seven hundred years : to which are added a few which still exist, but are on the verge of extinction (1907)

fullscreen Author: Rothschild, Lionel Walter Rothschild, Baron, 1868-1937
Subject: Extinct birds; Rare birds
Publisher: London : Hutchinson
Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
Language: English
Call number: 39999052949318
Digitizing sponsor: Boston Public Library
Book contributor: Boston Public Library
Collection: bostonpubliclibrary; americana
Scanfactors: 13

Full catalog record: MARCXML

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Description

"Literature relating to extinct birds": p. [xv]-xxvi

Based on his lecture published in the Proceedings of the 4th International Ornithological Congress [*3901.125]

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Reviewer: Melly42 - - September 13, 2008
Subject: Thanks for uploading
It's great to see this landmark work on extinct birds is finally online. But there must be also some place for a critical review. First, i must say Rothschild has compiled a lot of species which were unknown to Rothschild's time. He wrote about species from Museum collections which have been never described before and after his work. He described so called hypothecial species which are only based on paintings or oral reports. Compared with our current knowledge several described taxa must be now regarded as invalid like Astur alphonsi (a raptor which is only known by some bones from Mauritius but is in fact from the Mauritian population of Circus mallardi). Further Rothschild named all known Moa taxa and synonyms. But thanks to paleontological work of Trevor H. Worthy we are knowing that most moas which were described as distinct species to Rothschild's time were the females of another moa species as these were about three times larger than the males. Rothschild missed several species which were even considered as almost extinct to his time (1907) like the Passenger Pigeon, the Heath Hen, or the Carolina Parakeet. There 45 beautiful color paintings and 4 b/w sketches by John Gerrard Keulemans, George Edward Lodge, Henrik Grönvold, Frederick William Frohawk, and Joseph Smit.

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